


Tea and Smokes

by Maisie_top_trash



Series: Eating Disorder AUs [3]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anorexia, EDNOS, Eating Disorder, M/M, bunch of other stuff too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 05:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maisie_top_trash/pseuds/Maisie_top_trash
Summary: Josh liked to describe himself as an enigma and Tyler thought he was up to the challenge of cracking him, but it wasn't that easy. Nothing's ever straight forward when irrational thoughts are involved.





	Tea and Smokes

Cigarettes and tea.

Marlboro Golds and Twinings Earl Grey.

In school Josh had been taught about the healthy eating pyramid, and the eat well plate and MyPlate and every other fucking model to ever present itself in some intellectual's frontal lobe.

School had been paid for by a three time divorced one time widowed grandmother who thought his name was Joel. Her perfume smelt of fruity gasoline left to ferment in an oil drum on a summer's day. It stained his skin for many days after she returned to her 11 bedroom home in the hills.

You get what you pay for, that had been Mother's reasoning. We love you Joshua, we want the best for you, you deserve the best start in life and the best education will give you that. A boarding school will give you that. Well, joke's on her, the boarding school also gave him a nasty case of the blues and an unenviable addiction to self mutilation.

His hero was Pablo Escobar, had been ever since he learned aged 11 that the King of Cocaine spent $4000 every month on rubber bands. The nurse with the strong Dutch accent at the lilac hospital had given Josh his first rubber band as an alternative to self harm. It didn't work. He did it anyway. He spent $12 every month on rubber bands.

If he had to describe his perfect smell, it would not be the musk in the air after a rain storm. It would not be the tinge of cigarette smoke weaving a drape. It would not be a thumbnail piercing an orange peel too deep. It would be the tonka bean.

The last thing he could taste each night was copper.

His hero was Pablo Escobar, if his family hadn't disowned him then he would have exploited their wealth to build his own homage to La Catedral then filled a bath with salty water and flavoured it with thyme before tying himself to the bottom with the plug's chain and letting himself drown.

Racing pigeons had always been a cause for intrigue. He didn't understand them, why didn't he understand them? Why did they want to go home when home was so decorated with screeches?

Miss Havisham was the closest thing to love he had ever experienced. Reading of the madness which drove her to live her entire life trapped in perpetual mourning over something that was merely a matter of the heart filled him with such familiarity that he no longer felt alone when alone.

The first thing he could taste each morning was copper.

He kept a leather journal on his person at all times, and in it he wrote only in green ink. Every expense was recorded. Every expense. His only expenses were cigarettes and tea. Marlboro Golds and Twinings Earl Grey.

"You're doing it again babe."  
"I can't help it." Josh rubbed his eye then looked up at Tyler as the younger straddled him.  
"Bullshit you can't."  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
"You know exactly what that means," Tyler sighed whilst wrapping his arms around the back of Josh's neck.  
"Enlighten me."  
"You can't concentrate because you don't eat."  
"I can concentrate, I just choose to concentrate on things other than you."  
"Other more important things?" He asked, taking a pack of smokes out of Josh's breast pocket and putting one in his mouth for him. Josh bit it with his teeth whilst Tyler held a light to the end of it, then breathed it in deeply.

"Importance is irrelevant."  
"So go on then babe, what's more important than your boyfriend?" Tyler smirked as he stroked the back of his neck with his thumb. "Blind clockmakers? Unmargined legal pads? Moss cultures?"  
"No, no today is tonka beans and racing pigeons."  
"If you ate a sandwich then maybe you'd realise I wanna suck you off."  
"If you sucked me off then maybe I'd eat a sandwich."  
"Pfff, yeah, and I'm the fucking Pope." Tyler rolled his eyes then took Josh's cigarette and inhaled before handing it back to him, then slowly blowing the smoke all over his face.

"You know why I know you would never do heroin?"  
"That would require me to leave the house?" Josh tapped some ash down onto the bare mattress.  
"Nope, it's because you don't own a single spoon. Where would you boil it?"  
"The fuck do I need spoons for anyway?"  
"Ice cream."  
"I don't eat ice cream."  
"You don't eat period."  
"Exactly, no need for spoons."

"When did you last eat?"  
"Last night."  
"My ass doesn't count."  
"How about your dick?"  
"Nope."  
"I had tea this morning."  
"You're so fucking bad at this." Tyler sighed, taking another puff. "Food, you know, you remember food? Or has it been that long?"  
"Cheeky shit."  
"Maybe, also a concerned boyfriend though."

"I was on the Internet last night and I find out they used tea as a medicine for centuries."  
"I was on the Internet last night and I found out that the eating disorder clinic downtown is accepting new day patients at the moment."  
"I don't have an eating disorder Tyler."  
"All you do is smoke and drink tea, that's pretty fucking disordered."  
"It's pretty fucking hot." Josh winked as he tapped the end of his ciggy again.

"You know what's not hot? Starving to death."  
"I'm not gonna starve to death," he laughed but Tyler didn't.  
"You've got a fucking God complex, doesn't mean you're actually invincible. I mean look at you," the younger said, taking Josh's hand in his and holding it between them for inspection, although Josh wasn't entirely sure what the point he was attempting to make was exactly.  
"Hand? Yeah?"  
"I'm talking about the fucking bones and knuckles and ligaments and whatever that shouldn't stick out like that, I'm talking about the fact that when I fucked you for the first time I couldn't wrap my fingers around your wrist to pin you down and now I loop you like a fucking bangle. The fact you can't see that you're a weedy motherfucker now just shows how deluded you are. Go to hospital."  
"Nah,"  
"Nah? Why nah?"  
"Well it's not like I wanna be a weedy motherfucker, I didn't lose weight cos I wanted to, it just happened."  
"What? Overnight? And you not eating doesn't have anything to do with that?"

"Food just makes me wanna be sick."  
"So bulimia."  
"No, not fucking bulimia, I've never shoved me own fingers down my own throat. I'm talking about the whole concept, the whole idea of filling your body to the brim with different fucking textures and temperatures, makes me feel sick just talking about it." Josh spat before taking a deep gulp of hot cigarette smoke down into his lungs.

"I'm just worried about you baby, k? You're wasting away, look, you're all bone, that's fucking ridiculous." Tyler lifted up his shirt and poked his ribs.  
"Will you just get off my fucking case Tyler, I didn't invite you over for a fucking lecture, I invited you over to suck me off."  
"Tough. Shit. The moment you said you wanted to be more than fuck buddies was the moment I won the right to actually give a shit about you. Must be a crazy concept for you since you don't give a shit about anything, not even the fact that I care and I want you to get better."  
"Better's subjective." Josh rolled his eyes then took another drag.

"I don't understand you Josh." Tyler took the older's pack of cigarettes back out and got one for himself, lighting it after only a few seconds.  
"You're attracted to the enigma that is my consciousness."  
"Wrong. I'm in love with you." He corrected, taking another mouthful of smoke before continuing. "I am utterly and completely in love with you, and I don't care if you're too busy obsessing over cacti species to love me back, but I do care that you're about to start looking more like a skeleton than a living breathing human being."  
"What do you want from me Ty? Seriously, the fuck are you after?"  
"You know what I want, I want you to get yourself readmitted."  
"I've been in 3 separate complex care units, they too discovered that I'm an enigma, and they have given up trying to crack me, maybe you should too."

"What do you want from me then Josh?" Tyler asked him the same question, still straddling him but repositioning slightly so they were a little closer. "Just to sit back and smoke with you until you die?"  
"Sounds perfect." He licked his lips then leant in for a kiss but Tyler swerved.

"I told you I love you Josh, that's not a funny joke."  
"Who says I'm joking?" Josh shrugged but Tyler didn't play along for a change. "Look, I haven't cut myself in like a month. One victory at a time."  
"Victory's subjective." Tyler said then stood up and walked away from him, pressing his cigarette butt into the wall to extinguish it and adding to the rows upon rows of scorch marks that would deny Josh his security deposit if he lived long enough to move out.

For a while Josh debated just letting Tyler go and sit on the fire escape by himself, knowing eventually the cold would get to him and he'd come back to Josh, but with a sigh of frustration he managed to pull himself off the mattress on the ground and stagger over to the door to join him.

"You hath been graced with my presence." He announced proudly, holding his arms out in a cross but feeling wobbly so casually but quickly grabbing onto the steel bannister of the fire escape.  
"Why don't you just jump off Josh? Give me a second to turn my back, then jump straight off the edge."  
"Now that's not a very supportive thing to say to me baby boy." He sulked, flicking his cigarette over the side then sticking his bottom lip out.

"Oh so you want a supportive boyfriend now do you?"  
"I want a boyfriend who doesn't tell me to jump from 9 stories up." Josh said, snaking his arms around Tyler's waist and holding him at tight as his weak muscles could allow.  
"Well you've got a boyfriend who doesn't want you to die ever, and is clearly using this as a method to reinforce that he doesn't want you to fucking kill yourself Joshua." Tyler started softly but became more desperate in time. "Jumping off here, not eating, it's the same thing, it's suicide Josh. And just like I don't wanna watch you here, I don't wanna watch you in there either, have to come in everyday with your tea and your smokes and watch as you fade away right in front of my fucking face, just to ultimately walk in one day to find you dead. That's not fair on me."

"And I know you relish in quirks, find comfort, find meaning in your berserk aesthetic, enjoy the fact that you're different and utterly unique, but it's not worth dying for Josh. You're special, but you're not special enough to survive without food. You're not like the rest, but you still have to eat."  
"I know."

"I hope you know the fact that it would tear my heart in two to leave you, but it would tear it in three to see you dead. If you're saying to me that I'm not worth living for, that you're not gonna put up a fight or even change your ways in the slightest, then I can't keep seeing you Josh. And I know that's going to be torture for me because I love you, but watching you die is a whole other level of pain that quite frankly I'm not sure I can handle."

"Death, an empty conch with its smell of death that whispers in my ear of a life beyond. Reena Prasad."  
"Death is not beauty, death is not poetry," Tyler shook his head and wiped a tear that Josh hadn't noticed forming.  
"Death is a mystery, you like mysteries, after all you like me and I'm the biggest one of all." He countered but the younger looked away.  
"You're wrong actually Josh, you're wrong. I know that you like to shave the sides of your head because you don't like how your curls tickle your ears, I know that you stripped the wallpaper and exposed the brick in some parts of your apartment because it's a metaphor for how humans are all the same on the inside, I know that your natural body clock wakes up exactly 10 minutes before sunrise and you haven't missed a single one in 4 years." Tyler sniffed tearfully.

"I know that you reuse your teabags 3 times, I know that you've owned the same crappy lighter for 7 years, and I know that you sleep with your mattress on the floor because that's what your family taught you you deserved because they don't know you like I know you," Tyler reached up and stroked the back of his neck softly. "And maybe I don't know why you only write in green ink when you record expenses, but don't deny me the opportunity to learn by losing your mind to malnutrition. Please Josh, you deserve a prettier end than this, please, I have so much more to learn and so much more to give and so much more to love. Give me the luxury of time."  
"I'll, uh, I'll phone the clinic in the morning."

**Author's Note:**

> So I get my GCSE results in about 5 hours and I've been waiting over two months and I'm fReAkiNg OuT so this was a lil distraction to calm myself down.  
> Hope you enjoyed it x


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